


Demons Run

by thesignsofserbia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dark Sherlock, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Gen, Great Hiatus, M/M, Moriarty's Web, POV Sherlock Holmes, Post-Reichenbach, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sherlock Holmes Returns after Reichenbach, Sherlock Holmes and Feelings, Sherlock Is A Bit Not Good, Sherlock Loves John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 19:08:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4636872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesignsofserbia/pseuds/thesignsofserbia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'A good man can be stupid and still be good. But a bad man must have brains’- Maxim Gorky</p><p>In which Sherlock really isn’t a good man…and actually kind of is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Demons Run

**Author's Note:**

> "Demons run when a good man goes to war"-Steven Moffat

 

 

Sherlock will never be a good man; it’s just not in his nature. This at times is a considerable advantage, especially in his line of work.

  
After all, a good man could not traumatise a witness to speed things up a bit, he wasn't excited by the prospect of a gruesome murder. A good man couldn’t understand a psychopath’s thought patterns and _appreciate_ them. A good man couldn’t prioritise things over collateral damage, couldn’t value knowing the answer over getting the result, couldn't walk through the carnage with a smile on his face and a spring in his step. A good man couldn’t devoid himself of feeling on a whim, couldn’t completely disregard the needs of others, and just generally not give a shit.

  
Good men weren’t selfish. Good men weren’t cruel. Good men weren’t manipulative.

  
Therefore logic dictates that Sherlock is not a good man.

  
A good man could never smash in a dead man’s teeth with a hammer, thus making him unidentifiable by dental records, so that his corpse would be harder to trace. A good man would balk and wince at the mere thought of it; he just _could not do_ such a horrible thing.

  
Good men couldn't leave trails of mutilated bodies and destruction, stretching halfway across the globe.

  
Sherlock could.

  
Thinking about it, a good man could probably only have done about 12% of what he’d accomplished in those two years, and still retained his integrity, a good man would have been absolutely _rubbish_ at taking down Moriarty’s web.

  
So it’s actually a very good thing that Sherlock is _not_ a good man. Because he had been able to excel at these tasks, he’d been able to rise to the occasion, to be _pain_ fully thorough, and it _was_ a good thing; because the lives of two good men and one good woman had depended on his ability to do so.

  
John is a good man. A man capable of killing, yes, but a good man nonetheless. What John had done in Afghanistan was worlds apart from the necessities that came with Sherlock’s time away.

  
John could not have done the things that Sherlock had, and that is the simple truth. That was not a bad thing, and it did not mean he was inadequate, far from it. John’s inability to be cruel even in the direst of circumstances was one of his most admirable qualities.

  
No, John was proficient in a good many things, but exercising savagery and hatred was not one of them. And Sherlock was glad for it, John Watson was not _him_ ; John Watson was a good man.

  
But John _would_ have done it, or tried to. John would have dived head first into dismantling the web if Sherlock had asked him to, and that was precisely why he never would. Because John’s loyalty to Sherlock was a compulsion; a disease that he was duty bound to obey. That was part of what made him who he was, those values of duty and honour, values that Sherlock could never hope to uphold.

  
Even if John _had_ somehow managed to overcome his innate sense of morality, he would never have been able to live with the guilt, and it would have destroyed him. He would have become bitter and twisted, his heart shrivelled up in his chest. Every good man has a line he can not cross, and John would have come to resent Sherlock for making him take that step.

  
And where would Sherlock be without his heart?

  
John was all that was good in him; he kept him in check, single handedly preventing him from becoming the monster everyone else thought him to be. If he injected his poison into John’s veins and corrupted his heart, there would be nothing redeemable, nothing left to be salvaged, because John was the only thing in his wretched, miserable life worth saving.

  
He had always had a tendency to destroy everything he touched, but he would not let that be the case with John Watson.

  
Sherlock himself was also capable of a great many things, but he would never be able to forgive himself for doing that to John, for making him see the things he’s seen, for saturating John’s healing hands in the blood of Sherlock’s victims. John had enough blood on his conscience already, he's fought his own war already; this battle was Sherlock's.

  
He never wanted to see the day when John was no longer a good man, and for it to have been his fault. No, in taking John with him he might as well have been putting a bullet between his eyes. He could never ask those things of John, for that would be watching a good man die.

  
_That_ was why he wouldn’t have allowed John to accompany him, even if it _had_ been possible. Because he knew John would follow him to the ends of the earth if he asked, and he couldn’t let that happen; not this time.

  
John would almost certainly take offense at being treated like a damsel in distress, because he wasn’t. Sherlock was a fire-breathing dragon, and John had tamed him.

  
It wasn’t because Sherlock doesn’t respect his talents, he relies on John's skill-set daily. It wasn’t a matter of trust, for there is no one he holds in higher regard. He wouldn’t do it to coddle him, to keep him safe up on some pedestal of impossible standards, John would hate that and it would not do him justice.

  
It was because John _is_ a good man, and Sherlock needs him to remain that way.

  
So let John rail and shout about how he could have come with him, could have helped, that he didn’t need protecting. Sherlock _knows_ that.

  
John _doesn’t_ need Sherlock to protect him from the world; Sherlock needs _John_ to protect him from himself. John; as he was, and as he still _is_ , because he stayed behind; his colleague, his blogger, his doctor and his friend. John who is brave and proud, soft and caring, and infinitely strong without being hard.

  
Sherlock needs _John Watson_ , not someone else, someone who hates himself for the things he's done, the things that have fundamentally _changed_ him until he is unrecognisably John. Sherlock would rather John hate him instead.

  
Sherlock hadn't cared _what_ he'd have to do, who he'd have to kill, or even if John would have refused to see him ever again at the end of it; as long as John was alive, and still _John_.

  
Because Sherlock would not have been able to withstand the alternative.

  
It was never in question who, out of the two of them, was fragile; it would never be John.

  
John held him together when he was losing his mind, unstable, reckless, out of control, susceptible to corruption, mentally unsound. Where Sherlock had the tendency to self-destruct; John held his head up high and soldiered on.

  
Sherlock didn’t send John home to wait, cowering and helpless. He sent him to the home front, to protect the innocents; Mrs Hudson, Molly, and Lestrade. John's task was to hold the fort, in a time of great siege, whilst he sent himself out to pillage and plunder, ripping himself apart in the process.

  
He didn't _tell_ John because he was a good and honourable man, and as a direct result; a terrible liar, cheat, and con-man. That, and he never would have let Sherlock go without him if he knew, and Sherlock _had to_.

  
John could never have survived the wreckage and the corruption, but there was a flip-side to every story, because Sherlock never could have survived thatwhat John had endured; such devastating loss. He was not that strong.

  
Sherlock never would have made it were their roles reversed.

  
Lestrade had once said that Sherlock was a great man, and he was, but he would never be a good one; he would never be John Watson.

 

 

 


End file.
